James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

I recognized the speaker as Marshall Farley, owner of the five-and-dime.

Jacob leapt to his feet and spoke with passion. “There you go,” he said. “Niggers looking for jobs that belong to us! That old coon’s had a perfectly good job all this time, driving for one of the richest men in the county. Now he wants more. He wants a job that could go to a fella like me, a good man with a family to feed.”

In place of the polite murmur, a wave of anger now rolled through the crowd. I understood something new about these men. They weren’t filled just with hate; they were filled with at least as much fear . Fear that the black man was going to take everything away from them – their jobs, their women, their homes, all their hopes and dreams.

Then I realized Jacob was talking about me. “So if you ask me, I think it’s high time we teach our guest a thing or two,” he was saying. “He needs to know we aren’t just a bunch of ignorant bigots. I make a motion that we give over the rest of our meeting to the proper education of Ben Corbett.”

I looked around and couldn’t believe what I saw. Half a dozen men, in a rough circle, were coming right at me. Then they were upon me, and they had me trapped for sure.

FEELING SICK TO my stomach now, my brain reeling, I rode in the back of an open farm wagon with Jacob, Byram Chaney, and Doc Conover. I was the one with hands bound behind his back.

Cicadas made a furious racket in the trees, their droning rhythm rising and falling. We were driving south out of town into the swamp, an all-too-familiar journey by now.

I was almost as terrified as I was angry. When I spoke to Jacob, I could barely keep from screaming.

“How could you do this? The one man I thought I could trust!”

“Stay calm, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” I said.

“Ben, you can’t help it if you got some mistaken ideas about us,” he said. “You’ll find out, we’re nobody to be scared of. We’re fair-minded fellows, like you. I just ask you to keep an open mind.”

“By going to the swamp to watch you lynch another black man?”

“I said, stay calm .”

After a time we came into a clearing. I could have sworn this was the place where somebody hanged me. Where I almost died. But it was a different spot altogether.

Two men in white robes stood near a crude wooden platform. Between them they held a man in place, with a rope around his neck.

His face was turned away from me.

“Let’s go closer,” Jacob said.

“This is close enough,” I said.

But it wasn’t my decision to make. Byram Chaney lifted his reins and drove the wagon into the clearing for a better view of the murder.

Slowly the man on the platform turned to face the crowd. He was a small man. Frightened. Pathetic. On his nose he wore gold-rimmed spectacles.

The man was white.

“HIS NAME IS ELI WEINBERG,” Byram Chaney told me in confidential tones. “He’s a crooked little Jew from New Orleans. He talked three different widow ladies out of a thousand dollars each. He was selling deeds to some nonexistent property he said was down in Metairie.”

“And he would have got away with all that money,” Jacob said, “but the fellows found him yesterday, hiding in the out-house at the McComb depot.”

Eli Weinberg decided to speak up for himself. “Those are valid deeds, gentlemen,” he said in a quavery voice.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You can’t hang him, he might be telling the truth!” I felt my whole body shaking. “Why don’t you look into what he says?”

“We did look into it,” said Doc Conover. “We got word from our brothers that he’s been fast-talking his way into towns all over this part of the country.”

“So have him arrested,” I said.

“This is better,” Conover said. “We get the job done, no waiting, no money wasted on lawyers and trials and such. And we let them other Jews know they better think twice before coming to Eudora to steal from the likes of us.”

“The likes of you?” I said. “Hell, you’re all murderers!”

Eli Weinberg heard my voice. He twisted around in the hands of his captors to see who might have spoken in his defense. “Murderers! Yes, that man’s right! You are all murderers!”

Jacob said, “You’re missing the point, Ben. The Klan is here to fight against all injustice. We’re not here just to educate niggers. We’re here to educate anyone who needs educating.”

I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “You’re crazy, Jacob. You and your friends are just a bunch of crazy killers.”

Eli Weinberg shouted out, “Listen to him! He’s right! You’re all crazy killers!”

Those were the last words he spoke.

Someone jerked hard on the rope, and Eli Weinberg’s body flew into the air. His cheeks inflated. His eyes bugged in their sockets. His face turned an awful dark crimson, then slowly faded to gray. Vomit spilled from his mouth. His body jerked and trembled horribly.

Within seconds he was dead.

A few seconds after that, the brilliant flash of Scooter Willems’s camera illuminated the dark night.

THE HANGMAN’S BOWIE KNIFE made quick work of the rope. They let Eli Weinberg’s body fall to the ground with a thud. I had seen ailing farm animals put down with more respect.

“You reckon we oughta bury him?” a man said.

“Leave him where he lies,” said Chaney. “He said he had a son in Baton Rouge. We’ll get word to our brothers down there. The son can come fetch him.”

“Jews are supposed to be buried before sundown on the day they die,” I said.

“It figures you would know all about Jews,” said Doc Conover.

Chaney climbed aboard the wagon and took the reins. As we jolted out of the clearing, Jacob reached down to untie my ankles. “Turn around and let me do your hands,” he said.

I will confess it – I felt a wash of relief. They didn’t intend to kill me tonight.

Without any warning a stiff breeze swept over us, along with a spatter of oversized raindrops. The breeze died for a moment, then the rain was on us, lashing us with windy sheets of water.

I noticed that Doc’s wet white robe had become translucent, so I could read his name stitched on the pharmacist’s jacket he wore underneath.

“What you think, Ben?” Jacob asked as the wagon wheels slogged through the mud. “Is the Klan making a little more sense to you now?”

If Jacob hadn’t been a friend my whole life, I would have punched him right then. “Listen to yourself, Jacob. You just killed a man. Do you hear me? You killed him. ”

I thought he was going to snap back at me, but the fire suddenly died in his eyes. He shook his head, in sorrow or disgust. He stared down at his callused hands.

“You… will… never… understand,” he said. “I’m a fool to even try. You’re not like us anymore. You don’t understand how things have changed.”

“Let me tell you what else I don’t understand,” I said. “How you – the one I always thought was my friend – how could you do this to me, Jacob? Jacob, I was your friend. ”

“I did it to help you,” he said. “To keep you alive.” His voice was weak, pathetic.

The rain was beginning to slacken. The wagon slowed to a stop outside Scully’s barn, where the evening’s festivities had begun.

“Come on, Ben,” Jacob said in a low voice. “Let’s go home.”

“I don’t think so.” I turned away and set off walking in the direction of Eudora.

“Where the hell you going?” he called after me.

I didn’t answer or even look back.